News that one of the world's rarest birds, the sociable lapwing is now under threat from hunters in north-east Syria, reminds me of watching this wonderful bird in the unlikely setting of north Norfolk a few years ago. He was a breeding male flying in the May sunshine, and the combination of extreme rarity and stunning plumage – a subtle mixture of ochre, greyish-mauve and black – made it one of the most memorable birds I have ever seen.

Since that sighting, in the early 1990s, the sociable lapwing has suffered a precipitous drop in numbers, with the breeding population on the steppe grasslands of central Asia falling by 90%. At one stage it was thought that only a few hundred birds remained, and in 2004 the species was classified by Birdlife International as critically endangered – the highest category short of outright extinction.

Hopes were then raised when, in 2007, a sociable lapwing carrying a satellite tag was tracked more than 3,000 kilometres from Kazakhstan to a new stopover site in south-east Turkey. There, it joined a flock numbering an incredible 3,200 birds – increasing the known population almost tenfold overnight. In addition a new wintering site with at least 1,500 birds was found in the remote north-eastern corner of Syria.

But now a research team led by the RSPB and the Syrian Society for Conservation of Wildlife has discovered that birds passing through and wintering in this key area are being targeted by hunters. Fortunately the team has managed to alert the Syrian government, and rangers have negotiated with the hunters to persuade them not to shoot these rare and beautiful birds. With luck the lapwings will now be able to stop over in Syria without coming to further harm.

Whether or not the sociable lapwing will ever be seen in Britain again – and indeed whether it will survive as a species at all – now depends on an alliance between international and regional conservation groups from Europe, Africa and Asia, currently meeting in Kazakhstan. They underline the need not only to stop the hunting, but to try to discover why the world population of the sociable lapwing has declined so steeply, and introduce measures to reverse this fall.

And even though almost two decades have passed since I saw this stunning bird, I can still bring an image to my mind's eye, as it cavorted alone over the Norfolk marshes, impelled by the arrival of spring.